A closer look at NSW politics - without a vested interest, an agenda to push or a chip on my shoulder.

Wednesday, February 8, 2012

A Day in the Sun?

Being in opposition for the first time in a while brings with it a fairly unique set of challenges.

On one hand, a new government is likely to over-reach, and over-estimate the public's enthusiasm for change. It is all to easy to ignore the fact that, as often as not, the voters weren't so much endorsing you as repudiating the other lot.

Either way, new governments usually unfurl an ambitious agenda. They roll out a lot of the unpopular stuff early, which makes easy (if not always effective) fodder for a new opposition.

On the other hand, some ideas from a new government are harder for a new opposition to combat.

Sometimes a government will extend or expand an unpopular program championed by the old government. Even when the program is massively unpopular, there is often not much that can be done, as any comment criticising the move can easily be seen to be petty and opportunistic.

However, when the original program was generally popular and the new government extends it, there is even less that an opposition can say. They can't oppose the changes because the program was their idea in the first place, and they can't very well complain that the new program doesn't go far enough, given that the original program did even less.

Putting aside the rights or wrongs of banning solariums - where does Labor get off pretending that it is imperative that solaria are banned immediately? The situation is pretty much exactly the same as it was when they proposed that people under 30 or with fair skin be banned from using the solaria.

Moreover, hundreds if not thousands of people are employed in the business. Those people deserve the chance to start finding new jobs or new products for their businesses

Best of all, as I understand it, the quite timid restrictions on who could use solaria Labor proposed in November 2010 were cancelled just before leaving government.

Maybe Labor had their tails in the air after their success in the early parts of last week, and figured that it was time to start hitting the Coalition with everything they've got.

What Labor forgot, much like the "100 Broken Promises" document, is that a weak attack distracts from all your stronger once.

I think most voters are smart enough to see straight through this kind of politics.